The present invention relates to a novel kind of elastically deformable articles constituted of walls which are elastically deformable with respect to a balanced form, and to a method for producing the same.
By wall is meant a physical body substantially corresponding to a mathematical surface, either developable or not. The thickness of the wall is mathematically negligible as compared to its extension. Thus, the articles concerned by the invention can be in the form of plane or skew tubular pipes; conical, spherical, toroidal, helicoidal surfaces or any other complex surface.
By balanced form of an elastically deformable object is meant the original shape of this article, to which the article tends to return after having been stretched, compressed, or deformed. In other words, balanced form refers to the rest condition of an elastically deformable article.
Manufactured articles of this kind already exist for various purposes and are used in numerous fields of technology or even of everyday life.
For example, certain applications such as hydraulic applications, require flexible and strectchable tubes or conduits, designed to be fixed by their two ends to two endpieces, the respective position of which is variable in space within set limits, while allowing an unperturbed flow of fluid in any position adopted by said endpieces.
Numerous devices are sold on the market, either in plastic or rubber-based tubular form, or in the form of textiles woven or braided from polymers, which textiles can be reinforced by a sheathed metallic reinforcement.
Unfortunately, these conduits are often not longitudinally extensible and do not tolerate being misaligned or being bent too sharply without being crushed or damaged.
Their resistance to temperature is limited to that of their constituting materials, and consequently does not exceed a few hundred degrees, which is not sufficient for a number of applications.
On the other hand, elastically deformable articles of the above-mentionned kind also exist in nature: a number of blood vessels, organic membranes or cartilaginous tissues are indeed constituted by elastically deformable walls. In some surgical operations, it is necessary to replace those natural elastically deformable organs by artificial prosthesis, but until now no substitution article has been actually satisfactory from the double point of view of elasticity and biocompability.
One object of the invention is to provide a new type of articles constituted of elastically deformable walls with improved qualities that can find useful applications in the field of surgery as well as in the field of industry when hard environmental conditions of temperature, oxidation, etc. are met. The invention is, of course, not limited to such applications, but those appear to be exceedingly important at the present time.